Road to Wigan Pier and unemployment

“…these beings whom I had been taught to regard as cynical parasites were decent young miners and cotton-workers, gazing at their destiny with the same sort of amazement as an animal in a trap. They simply could not understand what was happening to them, they had been brought up to work and behold! It seemed as if they were never going to have the chance of working again. In their circumstances it was inevitable, at first, that they should be haunted by a feeling of personal degradation. That was the attitude to unemployment in those days: it was a disaster that happened to you and for which you were to blame.”